


The More Things Change

by AlyxSvoboda125



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Coming Out, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Secret Relationship, kind of, the howling commandos are super protective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3203924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyxSvoboda125/pseuds/AlyxSvoboda125
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over ninety years, too much ice, period typical homophobia, and brainwashing, Steve and Bucky separate, come back together, and change immeasurably...except not really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More Things Change

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting a fanfiction in a long time, and my first Captain America one. Just a warning: I don't read the comics and I don' watch Agents of SHIELD so everything not in the movies is fictionalized. Just fyi.

It was sweltering. A typical Brooklyn summer day: cloying, boiling, humid. They laid side by side on the chilled linoleum kitchen floor with the windows open wide, inviting in a light breeze, their arms just shy of touching, music drifting from the radio, bare-chested.

 

"I'd marry you, you know, Stevie," Bucky started haltingly, voice soft but utterly sincere. He turned his head to study his best friend's profile. "If I could."

 

"Yes, Buck," Steve whispered in reply.

 

Bucky's lips curled up into a smile as his eyes shifted back to the cracked, water-stained ceiling.

 

They never discussed it again.

 

* * *

 

 

"You've bee seeing that girl for a while now," Winifred Barnes commented, feigning disinterest as she moved a plate of bread from the kitchen counter to the dining table, stepping around her giggling nine-year-old coloring on the floor. She spared a glance to peer across the apartment at where Josephine had contented herself to hover behind Steve, watching raptly as his hands moved with swift confidence over the page, sketching Rebecca and Caroline, draped over a sofa and failing to keep still as they nudged each other playfully. A smile split across her face as she drew her gaze from them to her only son, pausing when she noted his eyes focused on the scene as well, fondly and softly, uncomfortably so, _The Hobbit_ forgotten in his hands. Shaking off the feeling going through her, Winifred swatted his shoulder, "Bucky."

 

He jolted and yanked his gaze back to her. "What?"

 

"Oh honestly, James," she lamented, clucking her tongue at him and throwing her hands up dramatically. "That dame you've been all over Brooklyn with," she reiterated. Bucky flushed, eyes flitting away from hers, and Winifred smirked, nodding knowingly as she kissed his cheek, brushing passed him and back into the kitchen to grab the pot of boiled potatoes. "What's her name again?"

 

"Nancy," Bucky replied tightly, eyes darting back to Steve and the girls. He swallowed, looked to Winifred, and smiled.

 

"Nancy," Winifred repeated as she gently kicked her youngest as she walked by, "Go wash up you." Margaret went off to the bathroom with a heavy sigh but no word of protest, leaving her stuff all over the floor. Winifred rolled her eyes but focused back on Bucky. "Real pretty name for a real pretty girl. Been with her a while."

 

Bucky scoffed, "Six weeks ain't 'awhile,' Ma."

 

"Longer than you usual relationship with a dame!" Steve called out from his seat without looking up from his sketch.

 

"You're such a lying punk, Steven Grant Rogers!" Bucky tossed back automatically.

 

Steve looked over with a boyish smile while Bucky rolled his eyes, defensive demeanor softening under Steve's gaze. Winifred frowned before shaking off their exchange with a long-suffering sigh.

 

"Ain't it time for you to be thinking about marriage? I want grand-babies before I'm dead and gone, James Buchanan."

 

"Shit, ma, you got four daughters for that."

 

Josephine made a face at her brother that he ignored while the other two girls giggled over his profanity. Winifred narrowed her eyes on him, prepared to remark on it, when Steve spoke first, demurely chiding, "Language, Buck."

 

Bucky huffed in annoyance but didn't otherwise argue, instead choosing to toss Winifred a disarming smile that might have made the girls fall at his feet, but only succeeded in making his mother purse her lips as her hand went to her hip, utterly unswayed. "You are twenty-four, James Barnes, and undoubtedly popular with the dames." Bucky gave her a cocky smile at odds with his sheepish shrug, boyish, charming, no doubt her son was a ladykiller. "Ain't it about time to think about settling down? Starting a family? Bet Stevie agrees with me, don't ya, Steven?"

 

Steve looked up, eyes wide like a deer in headlights, and Bucky raised his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest and silently daring Steve to agree with Winifred. For his part, Steve glanced from mother to son and back again before choosing to reply blandly with, "You know, Winifred, there's a war going on in Europe right now?"

 

Bucky beamed and tossed her a triumphant look.

 

Winifred glowered at the boy who might as well have been her adopted son in betrayal. He flushed and turned back to his sketchbook, ripping out the page and presenting it to Rebecca and Caroline with a flourish as he got to his feet, laying the book aside. She turned back to Bucky with narrowed eyes.

 

"If I run off and get married, who's going to take care of Steve?"

 

Steve made a noise of protest as he approached the pair of them, stopping beside Bucky to cross his arms over his chest as he huffed, "I can take care of myself, jerk."

 

Winifred nodded sagely, and Bucky pointedly ignored his mother to pin Steve with a skeptical look. "I'll believe that when you can go a week without getting yourself in some pointless fight in some back alley with some idiot three times your size."

 

"Like you don't get into any fights."

 

"Yeah," Bucky shot back, "the fights _you_ start."

 

Steve shook his head, his eyes bright and a fond smile curling over his lips. Winifred shifted uncomfortably, realizing that through their whole conversation their eyes had never wavered, never shifted, they'd barely even blinked, and their voices were so soft that it seemed almost intimate. Swallowing, Steve's smile dropped, and what looked like understanding crossed over Bucky's face, eyebrows draw together in concern as Steve looked to the floor, his fringe falling into his blue eyes before he looked at up, offering Bucky a watery smile. "You could, you know that, right? If you wanted to."

 

"I know that, Stevie. I've always known that. Nothing's changed."

 

Biting his lip, Steve nodded slowly, and Winifred's blood ran cold as her eyes flit between the pair of them. Margaret tore out of the bathroom, exclaiming, "I washed! Can we _eat_ now?"

 

Steve flinched and nodded, bending down to lift Margaret's art supplies, glancing from Bucky to Winifred. He flushed and ducked his head. "I'll go get the water," he muttered lowly before scurrying to the kitchen, Bucky's eyes following him the whole way before snapping back to Winifred's.

 

She gulped, unsure what to think about the relationship between the two of them. Clearing her throat, she smiled on Bucky and patting his cheek gently. "I do think you ought to settled down, but until then, it's good you two boys got each other. Been good for both of you, like having a brother," Winifred stated brightly.

 

Bucky coughed but managed to force out, "Yeah, Stevie sure is something else, ain't he?" And as innocuous as the words seemed, Bucky's tone was too serious, too fond, and his eyes too focused on the frail boy reappearing from the kitchen for Winifred's heart to do anything but break as she stared at her son like the stranger she was starting to believe he truly was to her.

 

* * *

 

 

They were having the argument again, the same one that wasn't really an argument between them but one between the genes in his cells and the government that he saw as prejudiced against them. Though, there'd been no word of outrage from Bucky's lips this time about some government interference. This time, they'd done right by Steve Rogers.

 

"I should be out there. Innocent people are being killed, Buck!"

 

It was dark, the cool night air filtering in through the crack windows and the whole kitchen smelling like the coffee-flavored gruel that was the only thing that they could afford but did it's job all the same. Steve's blonde hair was disheveled, his expression intense, and his eyes determined.

 

Bucky shook his head, "Not your fight."

 

" _You're_ going."

 

"Not my decision," Bucky replied lightly. Steve shot him a poisonous look, and he sighed, sipping his coffee and looking at an infuriated Steve steadfastly, "I'm not sorry. You ain't got no business running around a war zone, especially with your asthma. I've worked damn hard to keep you alive, Stevie. I need you to stay that way."

 

* * *

 

 

It was never an agreed upon thing, sitting around a fire and talking about the people they'd all loved and left behind a world away, but it happened nonetheless whenever the 107th got a delivery from Victory Mail. They'd all read their letters and pretend not to see tears in each other's eyes or open packages that made it through the screenings, and then, after dinner, they'd make their way down to the fire and huddle in the cliques they pretended hadn't formed like they were some primary schoolgirls, and talk about them all.

 

Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan's own letter was clasped in his hand, the scent of roses wafting from the paper as he lounged amongst his usual group. Gabe Jones on his right. James Montgomery Falsworth on his right, Bucky Barnes sprawled out across from them with a package between his spread legs and frowning at a piece of paper with Jim Morita on one side of him and the Frenchman on the other. He'd grown used to this, oddly enough, comfortable with it. Hell, these were men who'd saved his hide a time or two, the least he could do was be comfortable being as close to domestic with them as one could get in the trenches.

 

"Who sent you a letter this time?" Gabe nudged him and asked, "Charlotte or Anne?"

 

"Betty," Dum Dum replied with a dramatic sigh. Morita rolled his eyes while Dum Dum tossed his a wolfish grin. "We shared one night of passion during basic and now she's sending me dirty letters. I am a lucky man."

 

"So you keep saying," Gabe said, "I'm still convinced they're from your sister."

 

"No," Dum Dum shook his head and tipped his head and Falsworth's direction, "they're from his."

 

Falsworth smirked, "Kindly ask my dear _sister_ when she got her _cock_ replaced with something else."

 

Dum Dum winced, and Bucky and Gabe shared a look before devolving into laughter. Huffing, he elbowed Gabe, "Yeah, and who do you have writing to _you_ , your mom?"

 

Gabe shook his head and smiled smugly, "My girl. Denise."

 

"Fling?" Morita asked archly.

 

Smile not diminishing, Gabe shook his head, "Nah. The woman I'm going to marry if I get home. She says she's still waiting on me. Says that she waited long enough for me to get my ass together, what's another few years when I'm out on the front lines for her."

 

"Ain't that sweet," Dum Dum teased.

 

"You sweethearts, then?" Bucky inquired.

 

Gabe nodded, "All through high school. She wants to be a teacher. It ain't easy, but she's trying. Anyway, it took me two years to work up the courage to finally admit we were going steady, then it took me until the day I was shipping out to ask her to marry me."

 

Denier said something to him in French, and Gabe laughed uproariously, nodding before he looked over at the division's best sniper, lounging languidly but not enough to disguise his inward turned thoughts.

 

"What about you, Bucky?" Gabe asked, "You got a sweetheart waiting for you back home...or several like Dernier and ladykiller over her," Gabe pointed to Dum Dum who just beamed proudly.

 

Bucky's expression both softened and brightened as he looked down at the package, opening his mouth to respond before pausing and frowning, running a hand through his hair as he shook his head and tossed them all an easy smile. Too easy and incredibly weak. Dum Dum narrowed his eyes doubtfully. "No dame from back home'll be writing letters to me, unless you count the ones I'm related to."

 

"Oh come on, Barnes," Dum Dum prodded, "you expect us to believe _you_ , who could charm the skin off a snake, don't have anyone waiting for you back home?"

 

"Where do all the packages come from then?" Falsworth asked, "Your family suddenly come into money?"

 

"No," Bucky shook his head, a slight smile crossing his face as he looked down at the package, "it's...they're...my best friend sends them. Steve. He got a new job that pays him good, finally, so he's just trying to keep my morale up, I guess."

 

Dum Dum laughs, "Not shit. The bastard sends you socks, candy, new gloves last week, letters..."

 

"Drawings!" Morita pitched in.

 

"What'd he send you this week?" Gabe asked.

 

Bucky shrugged, "Candies. A letter. A drawing of my sisters. More socks. He's a good friend, great man, the best guy I ever met." His smile starts to spread automatically, and Dum Dum narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "We've been friends for _ever_ really. Met when some bastard kid was beating on him in the schoolyard. He kept getting knocked down, then got right back up. This scrawny seven year old that looked even younger. He's hacking up a lung and looks up at me when I run this guy off and goes 'I had him on the ropes'. Does it all the time too. I'm terrified he's gonna get himself beat to death by some asshole and die in a random back alley while I'm gone. God, he's such a punk. He's an artist, though."

 

"What does he draw?" Dum Dum pressed.

 

"Everything. Portraits. Landscapes. Comics. Used to draw for some major ones, but he gets so sick that they kept firing him because he couldn't make deadlines."

 

"He get sick a lot, then?" Morita questioned, meeting Dum Dum's eyes across their little powwow circle, and Dum Dum understood with perfect clarity.

 

Barnes was nice. He was tactile, fun, a drinker, and someone that made it easy to get along with him. The thing was, though, that he was also somehow taciturn and introverted when it came to expressing his actual genuine feelings. They rarely ever got to see him so open and comfortable talking about _anything_.

 

"All the time," Bucky sighed, running a hand over his face, no less diminished in his enthusiasm. The page in his hand hit his leg, and Dum Dum tilted his head to try and get a glance of the heavily shadowed image on the page while Dernier shook his head at Dum Dum's utterly lack of subtlety. "Pneumonia. Color blindness. Partial deafness. Allergic reactions to _everything_. Ulcers. Asthma. Every winter was a war for him to make it through. Terrifies me every year thinking that this is gonna be the year he..." Bucky's eyes narrowed as his hand ran over his face. Shaking his head, Bucky tossed the page into his package and stood, "I've gotta go take a leak," he said before wandering away.

 

Dum Dum got enough of a glance at the drawing to see that there weren't four little girls on the page but two intentionally blurred figures, unidentifiable beyond humanoid shape and hands clasped together between them with two words written underneath in loopy calligraphy: Nothing's Changed.

 

* * *

 

 

"It fixed me." He began.

 

"You weren't broken," was the reply. Instinctual, automatic, defensive, the way it had been every time someone had said the same thing over the last decade between the pair of them. He didn't take that kind of comment about his best friend from anyone, even Steve, or this Steve-like stranger huddled in a drafty tent with him.

 

Steve sighed and ran a hand through his blonde, wispy locks, "You know what I mean."

 

He does, but, then again, he doesn't. Bucky isn't sure he wants to know how deep this rabbit hole goes, what exactly this supersoldier serum has supposedly fixed, especially seeing as there'd been absolutely nothing wrong with Steve to begin with. And yes it was amazing to see him radiating the confidence and absolutely perfect goodness that Bucky had always known and seen that the world could now appreciate, Bucky just...he was scared.

 

"A dame kissed me," Steve confessed.

 

"Did you like it?" Bucky swallowed, waiting.

 

"Another dame shot me because of it," Steve replied, which wasn't really an answer though Bucky wouldn't call him out on it.

 

"Did you deserve it?" Bucky inquired archly.

 

"Jerk."

 

"Punk." A pregnant silence stretched out between them, and Steve played with his hands, anxious, agitated, Bucky sighed and Steve's head shot up, fear flashing through his eyes. "Did it...I mean, the serum, did it fix...?"

 

Steve shook his head a slight smile playing over his lips, "Nothing's changed, Buck."

 

And Bucky releases a shaky nod and manages a real smile, only just being able to contain breathing out _thank God_ , no matter how true or how much he wants to.

 

* * *

 

 

It would be a fallacy to say that she hadn't known not everything was as it seemed. Peggy Carter had always been a smart woman, extremely observant, but it wouldn't be entirely incorrect to say that perhaps she had purposefully overlooked certain signs because, as Phillips had pointed out, she had a crush. She _did_ have a crush, which unlike the colonel had alluded to, did not compromise her judgment if it did impede her perception of the overall situation.

 

Howard hadn't had that problem, looking up from where he bent over picking apart one of the Hydra weapons brought in by the rescued 107th and watching Bucky and Steve saunter in together for Bucky's appointment to test the sniper rifle that Howard had designed specifically for him. They talked quietly, smiles on their faces, arms occasionally brushing together. As Private Lorraine brushed passed them, tossing Steve a saucy smile, the super soldier blushed and ducked his head, peeking up at Bucky who stared after her, thoroughly unimpressed. He turned his gaze back to Steve and murmured something that had Steve throwing back his head and laughing, Bucky shook his head as a small smile played at his lips.

 

"Huh, interesting," Howard remarked.

 

Peggy pulled her own gaze away from the pair of men and down to Howard. "What are you on about now, Stark?"

 

Looking up at her with bemusement, Howard crooked an eyebrow and shook his head, "Oh no, if you don't see it well..."

 

She huffed, and Howard ignored her, getting his feet and making his way over to the pair of them briskly.

 

Not wanting to see it didn't necessarily mean that she didn't _at all_.

 

But she also saw the way that Steve's eyes followed her, the appreciation and admiration in them. The respect that he showed her at all times even though he was clearly attracted to her. Steve cared about her, which didn't mean that he didn't come running when Barnes called or brush her off kindly when Barnes's mood dipped dangerously, something he seemed prone to after his time in Hydra's custody.

 

Peggy never broached the subject with the pair of them, didn't dare, not even when she'd gone to medical after one of Steve's more ridiculous escapades to see him and found the man asleep, one of Barnes's dog tags resting on his bare, bandaged chest right beside his own. That of course had been the moment when Timothy Dugan and Jacques Dernier had stumbled into the medical tent, pausing in the opening before narrowing their eyes at the dog tags in her hand.

 

"Alright?" Dugan inquired archly.

 

She dropped the dog tags quickly and stood up straight, clearing her throat while Dernier crossed his arms over his chest.

 

" _I should go get the sergeant,_ " Dernier said tensely in French.

 

Dugan quirked an eyebrow but didn't otherwise move his gaze from Peggy. "That won't be necessary," she spoke finally. "I just wanted to come check that he was alright."

 

" _In the head or physically?_ " Dernier quipped. Dugan elbowed him gently.

 

"He's fine or he will be."

 

" _The sergeant wouldn't have left his side otherwise,_ " Dernier muttered quietly.

 

Peggy nodded her head slowly. "Yes, of course, I'll see you later gentlemen," she nodded at them before crossing to the flap over the tent, opening them and jolting in surprise when she nearly slammed into Barnes who blinked at her in surprise, glancing over her shoulder at Dugan and Dernier before nodding at her. He stepped aside and let her pass; she nodded at him, "Good evening, Sergeant Barnes."

 

"Agent Carter," Barnes retorted, his light Brooklyn tone coolly respectful.

 

It went on that way, the stand-off and the secret hidden between the line in every gesture, word spoken, and space between. Peggy's appreciation and attraction to Steve grew with each and every mission where he proved again and again that he was determined to be the hero the world needed, standing up and against anyone who would seek to oppress, with each daring intervention (in Sergeant Barnes's debriefs he referred to them as "stupid Steve-patented idiocy") to protect his team, and hair-brained schemes that made the brass balk that the Howling Commandos did regardless.

 

To the whole of the western world, Captain America was an icon, a hero, a perfect specimen of soldier and humanity. He was all of those things, but he was also Steve Rogers who drew doodles for her when one too many meetings dragged on long passed the time when everyone should have been released. The man who could sit at a bar with her and drink while they talked about movies, sports, and the war effort with ease like they weren't just dancing around each other but also were mates and equals, which a great deal of the men seemed to forget. He was shy with girls, still uncomfortable in his body, and full of heart if a tad bit more of a rebel than the numerous films and comic books might have said.

 

It didn't really hit her until she found him after the debriefing, after Barnes's fall, knocking back whiskey after whiskey in a secluded corner, his hair disheveled, and using a small knife to scratch into the surface of the bar top never mind the dark look the bartender kept shooting him. Peggy sat down beside him, opening her mouth to say something to him, an apology, a sympathetic...something because he needed that after losing his best friend, watching him fall right in front of his eyes, but her own caught on the words scratching into the counter: "Till the end of the line."

 

"I'm going after him. Schmidt." Steve said suddenly. Peggy turned to look at him, and Steve's blue eyes met her, hard and steely, "I'm going to wipe Hydra off the face of the Earth."

 

Peggy blinked at him, glancing back down discreetly, trying to see what he'd etched into the wood just beneath the first words.

 

Nothing's changed.

 

She frowned and glanced back up at him as he downed another glass of whiskey. This wouldn't end well, she knew that, not for Schmidt and not for Steve, but she didn't say that, just bought him another round and let him mourn.

  

* * *

 

 

They sat on the fire escape of the small two bedroom Brooklyn apartment that Steve had found sometime after he had shot through his windows in an apparently futile attempt to assassinate Nick Fury. Perhaps it was petty, but after one too many meetings with the man in question, he almost wished he'd succeeded. His therapist had said that was inappropriate humor, but Steve's lips had quirked with obvious understanding before schooling his expression and offering him some oranges.

 

He leaned back on his hands, eyes on Steve, watching as he sketched the Manhattan skyline in the fading light of day. "I might never remember everything."

 

"I know," Steve replied succinctly, not once faltering in his sketch.

 

"I'm not...I'm not _him_." He tried. He hadn't meant to say it, but it was better than: _I remember you, I remember everything about you, about us, you were my goddamn world once what happened to that, do you not care anymore, is me broken and lost too much for you, do you want him back the way he'd been because I care never live up to a ghost of myself, nothing's changed for me, has it for you?_ Altogether, Bucky felt satisfied that those five words were the only ones that had spilled from his lips.

 

Steve looked up at that, studying Bucky carefully before he smiled gently at him, the affection in his gaze warming Bucky and allowing some of the tension to ease. "You don't have to be who you used to be. We change. We all change. I don't expect you to be the same; I'd be worried if you were. We're okay."

 

Except that they weren't, not really, but Bucky nodded slowly anyway, eyes never leaving Steve as he turned back to his sketch.

  

* * *

 

 

The 21st Century was a culture shock to say the least. Inflation: out of control. Food: unbelievable. War: still going on. Internet: fantastic. Cell phones: God bless those things. The government: still hadn't got their shit together. The press: almost exactly the same. It was nice that some things stayed the same, Steve figured, even if it did have to be the behavior of the press.

 

He couldn't exactly run away from them either since, as Pepper had put it, "You break the city, the least you could do is answer some question about it."

 

Okay, yes, she had a point, but on the other hand, it wasn't technically the Avenger's fault since they hadn't (with the exception of Tony) invited aliens, brainwashed assassins, a group of neo-Nazis, various terrorists, and gods with delusions of grandeur to come and try to overlord over humanity in the first place. When he'd pointed that out, Bucky had laughed and Pepper had nodded before saying, "Press conference. 3:00. Make sure you get there. Okay? Great."

 

He'd gotten there with Bucky in tow, munching on a Kit-Kat and playing with Twitter, something Steve had never gotten a hold of, though, Bucky and Sam were both convinced that his 'misunderstanding' of Twitter came from his blatant dislike of it. That was probably true, but Tony had started one too many Twitter wars for Steve to hold anything but disdain for a site where people could post their every whim and thought for the world to see, all day, every day. Unnecessary.

 

Bucky lived for it, though, and Steve lived to see Bucky happy, which was the only reason he had a Twitter at all and the only reason he went on it was to supply snarky response to weird Instagram photos and cat Vines Bucky Tweeted at him never mind if they were sitting right next to each other.

 

Rehabilitation had been a long, slow process, six months before he'd talk to anyone other than Sam and Steve, and then only in clipped Russian to Natasha, meeting after meeting with neurologists and biologists and therapists and Bruce once they'd hit the eight month mark. He got on shockingly well with Tony once he'd opened up enough to let him tinker and experiment on the arm. They tended to sit in the lab with 80s music blaring and nursing whiskeys while Tony dug through the cybernetic arm and Bucky talked far more honestly than he did with any of his therapists. Somewhere between making friends and becoming comfortable, they'd been persuaded to move to the Tower where Sam now held his VA meetings, what remained of SHIELD situated their offices, and most of the Avengers lived.

 

I had taken over a year to get back to being _SteveandBucky_ , something Bucky would never let Steve forget. After all, the tension had been building between them for months before Bucky had snapped after Steve had returned from one of his bizarrely platonic romantic dates with Sharon, shaking with fury as he yelled, "If you don't want me anymore, just tell me! I'm a big boy, and apparently no longer libel to go on spree killings if I get upset so don't just do this bullshit! Fucking communicate Stevie! That was always your fucking problem! Apparently seventy goddamn years didn't solve anything!"

 

That had led to hot, dirty, angry kiss that made them both moan with relief, the feeling of coming home from the cold _finally_ before several rounds of enthusiastic "you can't get your shit together/I'm so fucking glad you still love me/we could have been doing this ages ago you idiot/I'm still so in love with you" sex because, evidently, the serum was good for more than just healing, muscles, and withstanding poor cryostasis. It wasn't good for maintaining the hickeys that Bucky persistently aimed to give him, though not for lack of trying.

 

Bucky tangled their ankles together underneath the table, shooting Steve a smile that made his lips curl up automatically even as he hunched in his seat, arms crossed over his chest, and hair falling into his face in an blatantly combative move against the press. Natasha glanced over at the ex-assassin and smirked, shaking her head while Steve leaned forward and shifted just enough to partially block Bucky from view of the blinding flashes and rabid press core.

 

"Is it almost over?" Bucky ground out through clenched teeth.

 

Steve frowned and glanced back at him before turning his attention to the woman Pepper had hired to handle specifically Avengers press. He tapped his wrist, and Eileen nodded her head, stepping forward. "We have time for a couple more questions."

 

"Better?" Steve asked Bucky.

 

He sighed, "Not really, but I'll take it, punk."

 

A woman stood up when Eileen pointed to her. "Hi. Yes. Cynthia Johnson from OUT." Steve frowned. Eileen's eyes went wide.

 

Bruce stilled, "Uh-oh."

 

Bucky and Steve shared a glance.

 

"Captain America, the LGBTQIA movement has gained a significant amount of ground since the early twentieth century, given how different times were back then for people with non-binary sexualities, what do you think of more recently laws regarding the issue?"

 

Steve blinked and shot a look at Bucky who mirrored his blank face, leaning forward to ask, "Come again?"

 

"Gay marriage for instance, has been legalized in New York state. Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been repealed, allowing homosexuals to openly serve in the military."

 

"Well shit, Steve," Bucky remarked, turning to look at him.

 

Steve sat still, frozen, utterly in shock. Ninety years ago, Steve had fallen in love with his best friend, endured as he went on date after date to deflect attention, stewed and suffered and feared for their lives, nearly got blue-billeted a hundred times by Phillips until Peggy diffused the situation with statistics and "nasty rumors backed with nothing factual whatsoever", loved and lost, and found and rehabilitated. He'd woken up in a century where they hadn't had to hide, and he hadn't even known them.

 

Beside him, Bucky leaned forward and laughed, lightly, warmly, as he threw an arm around Steve's shoulders and pulled him into his side. "Steve loves to fight for the little guy, metaphorically speaking of course."

 

"Underdog might be a better word," Natasha added.

 

Bucky sighed, "Well fine, underdog then. I for one am glad that at least he won't be getting in any more fights because the police won't show up if two people being beat in the alley are queer. Same with a man harassing a woman, because you can report that now and not have the woman be looked at sideways and being asked what she was doing out so late. He's positively speechless with how thrilled he is, aren't you, Stevie?"

 

Blinking, Steve turned his head, gaping slightly to look at Bucky with wide eyes, "Buck."

 

Shaking his head and offering Steve a soft smile, Bucky leaned over to whisper in his ear, "What would you do if I asked you to marry me, now that I can?"

 

Steve slapped him in the chest automatically, and Bucky drew back slightly to meet his gaze. Steve shook his head, "You jerk, I said yes about a dozen times since 1939."

 

Bucky beamed, cupping Steve's face in his hand, and Steve smiled back, heart pounding so wildly that it drowned out the blinding flashbulbs of cameras and the shouts of the journalists and Eileen telling everyone that there'd be no more questions. There would be more questions, he knew, and comments from people who would never be content to let two people be content with their own happiness. But as Bucky's lips met his in front of dozens of people, his dog tag digging into the skin of Steve's chest, and his hair brushing the his cheeks, Steve felt ready to face it all.

 

Almost a century, and even when everything changed, some things never did.


End file.
